


A Growing Concern

by Ealasaid



Series: A City In Shadows [8]
Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: AU, Gen, Mobsterswitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ealasaid/pseuds/Ealasaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Dead-Eyed Detective and you’re starting to get concerned over how your spy is being courted by the city’s foremost criminal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Growing Concern

Your name is Dead-Eyed Detective and you’re starting to get concerned over how your spy is being courted by the city’s foremost criminal.

It started in those weeks in the middle of a beautiful April where Snooping Scout jitters all over the place whenever someone so much as mentions Peccant Scofflaw, before things seem to settle and he starts acting normally again. In a few months, rumors start cropping up that Scofflaw’s got a close friend, and at the same time long-time associate Heinous Doxy corners Scout in an alley and cuts his fucking arm off with her freaky chainsaw-lipstick shit.

It’s when you’ve got Scout howling on a hospital bed that you manage to wrangle a little of the truth from him; he shiftily confesses running across Scofflaw off duty, but denies it being any more than that.

Nevertheless, the Felt start eyeballin’ you hard and you have to wonder why they keep inquiring about Scout’s habits. They take care not to seem overly interested, but damn it all if they mutter whenever he runs into any of ‘em on their beats or at the station.

For a brief period things sort of run out of focus, and you all get caught up in a string of cases that leads to the capture of an entire smuggling ring. There’s paparazzi and screaming headlines everywhere and the whole team’s too overworked to get into much shit off duty. But more solid evidence starts cropping up here and there and you start to hear word of Scofflaw toying with Scout at this bar and the two of them drunkenly doing things in that alley with enough regularity that suspicion morphs into growing certainty.

You break into Scout’s apartment once. The closet’s overflowing with packages stamped with Scofflaw’s laurel wreath. They’re all half opened and the contents are unused. Under the bed, you find a very nice cigarette case with the same signet. A few weeks later, Scout gets you to help him burn it all to hell while you tell him to get out of whatever he’s in before he gets killed.

Late one night in August, you find him in a shitty alley not unlike the one Doxy left him limbless in on your way to get some more cigarettes. He’s dripping wet, his eye’s gone, and he’s half dead from shock and fever. It’s not hard to figure out whodunit.

Scout pulls through after a week of things maybe going bad. Fucking Scratch himself comes by to interrogate your man, but Scout doesn’t tell him shit. Good kid. You don’t want the commissioner breathin’ over your team’s shoulders, he can do his own dirty work. 

You’re not sure where things go after that. Part of Scout’s job is to go to all those shady bars he kept running into Scofflaw to keep the Meddlesome Company abreast of the shady dealings in the less-than-lawful community, but he stays awfully quiet and skitters away from anything to do with Scofflaw as far as you can tell.

It’s right about then that you wake up in the Pernicious Innovator’s apartment, and you find out just how hard it is to avoid one of the Twilight Scoundrels when they show that much interest in you.


End file.
